Hegel on the Political Significance of Collective Self-Deceit

2018 ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Robert Pippin
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Collective Intentionality ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Political World ◽  
Collective Self ◽  
Philosophy Of Right ◽  
Group Agents

In a famous passage in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel claimed that ‘philosophy is its own time comprehended in thought’. But our time is very different from Hegel’s, so two approaches have developed to understanding the relevance of his work for the contemporary world. One looks to remaining points of contact, such as his criticism of a contractualist view of the state. Another tries to apply his general approach to contemporary issues. Both are valuable, but in this article, the latter is taken up, and one issue is the focus. The question is, assuming there can be collective intentionality and collective agency (what Hegel calls Geist (spirit)), how should we understand Hegel’s claim that such group agents can be collectively self-deceived? And how would that claim bear on the contemporary political world?

Exit, Voice and Values in Economic Institutions

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Blood Donors ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Political World ◽  
Economic Sphere ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Moral Superiority

Are there worthwhile values and ideals which flourish in the procedures of the state but wither in the transactions of the market? Are there equitable and fulfilling social relationships which are nurtured in the economic sphere but crumble in the political world? There is clearly some truth in the claim that at least in certain circumstances market systems inculcate in people not only ‘honesty and diligence, but also sensitivity to the needs and preferences of others’ (Gray, 1992, p. 24). On the other hand, it is difficult to deny the appeal of a tradition of thought which attaches moral superiority to the non-market ideals and values epitomised in the gift relationship. Titmuss (1970), for example, objected to treating blood as a commodity in part because it undermined the sense of fraternity or community which a system of voluntary blood donors enhanced. A contemporary statement of this position holds that gift values differ from commodity values in being ‘tokens of love, admiration, respect, honor, and so forth, and consequently lose their value when they are provided for merely self-interested reasons’ (Anderson, 1990, p. 203).

Counter-hegemonic leadership for democratic alter-politics in our times

Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572110634
Author(s):  
Alexandros Kioupkiolis
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Second Step ◽  
The Political ◽  
Organizational Studies ◽  
Mass Mobilization ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Democratic Leadership ◽  
Collective Self

This article sets out to grapple with strategic challenges facing democratic alter-politics in our times, dwelling on the question of leadership to explore ways of overcoming the frailties and risks that beset grassroots collective agency for democratic renewal. Discussion begins thus by fleshing out the notion of contemporary democratic alter-politics which breaks both with top-down statist rule and conventional activism, fostering openness, diversity, assembly-based democracy, attention to process, egalitarianism, prefiguration, work in everyday life along with mass mobilization, and engagement with institutions to effect change. In a second step, the argument brings out the strategic limitations of this alter-politics by engaging with relevant theories and reflections on strategy. The following key part of the article sketches the outlines of a strategy of counter-hegemony that could tackle some of these limitations by reconfiguring democratic leadership. Drawing on recent social movements and organizational studies, critical analysis will seek to indicate how the pursuit of effective leadership can be aligned with the alter-politics of egalitarian collective self-direction to boost and expand it in the political circumstances of the present. The nub of the argument is that ‘another leadership’ that is assembly-based, technopolitical, reflective, distributed, ‘servant’, and feminized can further democratic alter-politics.

“Marx and Political Theory”

1968 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. Pranger
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political System ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Will

This is a political world of power and competition for power, together with, hopefully, the legitimate authority that goes with such power; a world where ability to dominate the will of others is prized either in itself or for other ends. Politics is associated with the quest for power, as an end or means. It is not surprising, therefore, that in looking at those thinkers in the past who have focused on human relationships and organized associations, commentators should be facinated with how they looked at domination, and also, secondarily, how they viewed freedom from such domination (for example, the limits of power). In the measure that these thinkers dealt with politics, one might say, they concerned themselves with power, authority, leadership, and, coincidentally, with freedom. put another way, what is typically “political” about their views about the “political system”; that is, how they looked at the process whereby valued goods are allocated authoritatively. This “system” includes formal, publlic institutional arrangements, such as the “State”, and processes within these institutions, such as “conflict” and“conciliation”.

The Political World of Fulke Greville

2018 ◽  
pp. 260-276
Author(s):  
Andrew Hadfield
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sir Philip Sidney ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Poetry ◽  
Political World ◽  
The People ◽  
Fulke Greville ◽  
Political Works ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter provides an overview of Greville’s political poetry, arguing that his work has to be understood as part of a tradition of writing which aimed to explore the relationship between the Crown and the people, expressing ideas in pithy, memorable maxims. Greville explores the rights and duties of rulers and ruled throughout his political works, most significantly, Mustapha and A Treatise of Monarchy, works which recall earlier political poetry such as A Mirror for Magistrates and the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney. Greville emerges as a figure always interested in imagining a truly balanced constitution in which the monarch and the people cooperate and respect each other: accordingly, his most forceful criticism was aimed at what he saw as the encroaching power of the state in the seventeenth century.

The State as a System of Three Syllogisms

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Vieweg
Keyword(s):  
Internal State ◽  
The State ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Law ◽  
Science Of Logic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Coordination System ◽  
Philosophy Of Right

Hegel’s theory of the state is the culmination of his practical philosophy that he presents as a philosophy of freedom. However, many substantial contents of the Philosophy of Right remain unexplored unless one draws on the Science of Logic, which constitutes the coordination system of the argument. This chapter examines the fact that Hegel describes the state as a whole of three syllogisms. This does not apply to the structure of internal state law and to the political state (the constitution) only but also elucidates the overall structure of the state. Crucially, the application of the triad of the syllogism is realised in the context of interpreting the state as a single totality, that is as a whole that supplies its own inner logical mediation. So what is at stake is the justification of the individual freedom of all particular actors within the universality of a modern and democratic state.

Strategic Tensions in the Scale of Political Analysis: an Essay for Philomphalasceptics

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sproule-jones
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Normal Science ◽  
Political World ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Theoretical Reasoning ◽  
As If

Tucked inside Thomas Kuhn's masterly little book is a statement to the effect that scholarly endeavours, that have yet to fix upon an accepted paradigm, display continual and often exacerbatic confrontations between rival wings each trying to press upon the other the virtues of their particular mode of scientific procedure. In Kuhn's own words: ‘Because it [the awareness of anomaly] demands large scale paradigm destruction and major shifts in the problems and techniques of normal science, the emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity.’ It seems as if political scientists have taken this point to heart. Rarely does an issue of a journal appear without some restatement or reappraisal of the ‘State of the Discipline’ and related problems.² Apart from the obvious point that political scientists must be spending inordinate amounts of time in such debates, and so perhaps neglecting other fruitful activities — a point which my economist friends would characterize as opportunity costly — there is a concomitant danger that the political world may begin to appear only analyzable with the aid of abstruse, esoteric and above all novel paradigms. Theoretical reasoning may be sustained on the basis of novelty rather than perspicuity.

The Politics of Form

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Wohl
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Politics Of Form ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Political World ◽  
Dramatic Form

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, namely to prove the very simple proposition that in Euripidean tragedy, dramatic form is a kind of political content. The project is motivated by two separate but intersecting problems. The first is the problem of Euripidean tragedy. There are eighteen extant tragedies confidently attributed to Euripides and many of them are, for lack of a better word, odd. With their disjointed, action-packed plots, comic touches, and frequent happy endings, they seem to stretch the generic boundaries of tragedy as we usually think of it. The second problem is the relation between the play and its contemporary world, the political world of democratic Athens. Tragic dramas were, almost without exception, set in the mythic past, not in the fifth-century polis, and almost never allude overtly to their contemporary moment. The remainder of the chapter discusses the meaning of politics of form by way of a brief illustration.

scholarly journals Nationalism in the Muslim World and the Identity Crisis: A Sociological Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakir Al Faruki
Keyword(s):  
Identity Crisis ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Sociological Perspective ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Political Sphere ◽  
Political World

Nationalism is a core phenomenon in the modern political world on which the state is established and functioned, at least most of the stakeholders argued. In the contemporary Muslim world, the sociopolitical concept comes to the Muslim youths as the most influential as well as vague ideological term in the political sphere. Sometime they confused with explaining the idea especially, comparing with Islamic interpretation of nationhood and nationality. This article investigates the prevailing condition of the explanation about the concept in the Muslim world and makes an effort to analyze it with the sociopolitical ground reality in the globally communicated growing young generation. In addition to this it undertakes an effort to clarify ambiguous understanding about the concept in Islam, sometimes which placed to encounter Islam as global sociopolitical phenomena. It is entirely an academic analysis of the concept considering current global perspective of the Muslim community.

The Crisis of the State and the Region: Regional Planning Questioned

1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
B K Becker
Keyword(s):  
Regional Planning ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Full Participation ◽  
National Power ◽  
Different Levels

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the political significance of the alternatives for regional development in which community participation and the decentralization of decisionmaking power are proposed. Although their discourses are similar, they have different ideological motivations and content. These proposals, together with the crisis in regional theory and planning are associated with the contradictions inherent in the economic globalization of the contemporary world: the conflict between the corporation and the state; the crisis of the state and the region; and the intensification of protest movements organized on a territorial basis. The central question is the sharpening of the contradictions of the state, which ensures bourgeois domination but is also (in countries of peripheral capitalism) the only force capable of (a) ensuring social investments on the necessary scale and (b) confronting global capitalism. This question is denied both in proposals for decentralization and in the criticism made of them by political economists, which thus hampers identification of political priorities. In Brazil, which is a country of continental size and advanced industrialization, economic crisis is accompanied by a crisis of legitimization of the state. The solution of the crisis and the democratization of the country demand not its fragmentation but a national power legitimized by full participation of all segments of society at different levels.

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